A Conservative Urges No On Bush (Joe Gandelman)
Joe Gandelman
Salon has a truly startling piece by Reaganite Doug Bandow titled " Why conservatives must not vote for Bush."
What's startling is that this bluntly written pieces is by a Reaganite. You have to suffer through a very short commercial on a "one day pass" to read the original on Salon -- but I advise you to do so, since this post will feature a few key points. If you boil it down he argues that conservatives are embracing Bush because they want to win and in doing so are abandoning key conservative policies -- and that a Bush II term could be a troubling one.
A few key points (read the whole thing after):
And a second term on the domestic front?
He also takes him to task on foreign policy, terrorism, nation building, changing the courts, and goes on to write:
He points to Andrew Sullivan as a former supporter (that will lose him points with some since Sullivan is highly controversial)and adds:
What's holding conservatives to the GOP? John Kerry, he notes.
You thoughts on why he is right/wrong and why are welcome in comments.
What's startling is that this bluntly written pieces is by a Reaganite. You have to suffer through a very short commercial on a "one day pass" to read the original on Salon -- but I advise you to do so, since this post will feature a few key points. If you boil it down he argues that conservatives are embracing Bush because they want to win and in doing so are abandoning key conservative policies -- and that a Bush II term could be a troubling one.
A few key points (read the whole thing after):
Quite simply, the president, despite his well-choreographed posturing, does not represent traditional conservatism -- a commitment to individual liberty, limited government, constitutional restraint and fiscal responsibility. Rather, Bush routinely puts power before principle. As Chris Vance, chairman of Washington state's Republican Party, told the Economist: "George Bush's record is not that conservative ... There's something there for everyone."
And a second term on the domestic front?
Nor would a second Bush term likely be different. Nothing in his convention speech suggested a new willingness by Bush to make tough choices. Indeed, when discussing their domestic agenda, administration officials complained that the media had ignored their proposals, such as $250 million in aid to community colleges for job training. Not mentioned was that Washington runs a plethora of job training programs, few of which have demonstrated lasting benefits. This is the hallmark of a limited-government conservative?
He also takes him to task on foreign policy, terrorism, nation building, changing the courts, and goes on to write:
Bush's record has been so bad that some of his supporters simply ask, So what? Bush is "a big government conservative," explains commentator Fred Barnes. That means using "what would normally be seen as liberal means -- activist government -- for conservative ends. And they're willing to spend more and increase the size of government in the process."
But this political prostitution is unworthy of venerable conservative principles. Undoubtedly, reducing the reach of government is not easy, and there is no shame in adjusting tactics and even goals to reflect political reality. But to surrender one's principles, to refuse to fight for them, is to put personal ambition before all else.
He points to Andrew Sullivan as a former supporter (that will lose him points with some since Sullivan is highly controversial)and adds:
Those who still believe in Bush have tried to play up comparisons with Ronald Reagan, but I knew Reagan and he was no George W. Bush. It's not just that Reagan read widely, thought deeply about issues and wrote prolifically. He really believed in the primacy of individual liberty and of limited, constitutional government.
What's holding conservatives to the GOP? John Kerry, he notes.
Fear of Kerry, more than love of Bush, holds many conservatives behind the GOP.
Yet serious conservatives must fear for the country if Bush is reelected. Is Kerry really likely to initiate more unnecessary wars, threaten more civil liberties and waste more tax dollars? In any case, there are other choices (e.g., the Libertarian Party's Michael Badnarik, the Constitution Party's Michael Peroutka and even Independent Ralph Nader).
Serious conservatives should deny their votes to Bush. "When it comes to choosing a president, results matter," the president says. So true. A Kerry victory would likely be bad for the cause of individual liberty and limited government. But based on the results of his presidency, a Bush victory would be catastrophic. Conservatives should choose principle over power.
You thoughts on why he is right/wrong and why are welcome in comments.
The perfect is the enemy of the good.
I have no big problems with most of Bush's domestic spending, but then, it is standard economic practice, has been for decades under Presidents of both parties, that when you're in economic hard times, you go ahead and run up the deficits and either increase spending or cut taxes or both in order to stimulate the economy back into motion. It amuses me to no end that people on the left now act like this is a crime when it has, in fact, been what the left advocated doing for decades, going all the way back to Franklin Roosevelt.
Although conservatives shouldn't take these criticisms too deeply to heart either. The fact is that Bush got handed a wartime situation, and it's a war most conservatives badly want fought in the aggressive way Bush is fighting it. Indeed, his harshest critics on the right actually accuse him of not being aggressive enough, and would like to see him take military action against Iran, North Korea, and possibly even Saudi Arabia. But those people will not vote for Kerry.
On domestic issues, it is pretty much a given that a President only has so much political capital, and investing it in sharp cuts in government spending during the middle of a war is simply unreasonable for conservatives to ask for.
You could make the case, as economist Milton Friedman would, that the best thing for fiscal conservatism is to have a Democratic President and a Republican congress, or vice versa. There's something to be said for that, for when they fight each other spending is likely to grow less. On the flip side, that certainly was never true when Richard Nixon faced a Democratic congress and wound up massively expanding government anyway.
Truth of the matter is that if you look at the size of government right now, in proportion to the size of the population or the size of our Gross Domestic Product, the size of government is moderately larger now than it was under Clinton, and significantly smaller than it has been at several points in our past. The notion that Bush's domestic spending--which has included a number of short-term economic programs that were enacted in reaction to 9/11 as well as to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security--is really nowhere near as dramatic as some handwringers are making out.
I would assume that on a domestic level, the budget fights between a President Kerry and a (likely) Republican congress would be epic, and that spending might be held down--but you never know. Sometimes these battles wind up with a "compromise" in which all sides get as much money as they want for everything, and Kerry's as likely to do that as the reverse.
Besides all this: Bush never ran as a tight-fisted fiscal conservative. He never presented himself as one, back in 2000 or any time since. Since taking office, he has done some things that make conservatives happy, and some that make them unhappy. The funny thing is, he's done the same for the liberals, and so many of them wind up hating him for it anyway. But that was true for Clinton as well: if you look at his actual list of accomplishments, Clinton could have been a very respectable Republican President.
Enh. It seems to me like too many people just don't look deeply enough at these things, and get too hung up on labels like "liberal" and "conservative" anyway.
Let us also not forget that Presidents select judges. In today's world, judges sometime exert more influence than legislatures. That’s another reason I’m voting for Bush.
I would see a Kerry Presidency as a wondering one. The man simply cannot make up his mind. Whichever wind is blowing the strongest, that’s the way he points.
One last story that I think is telling. When Kerry wrote his acceptance speech for his convention, he wrote it out long-hand on paper. Then he took scissors and tape and rearranged his text to suit his needs. When he was happy with it, he gave to his staff to type into a PC.
The man doesn’t have a blinking clue about modern technology. It doesn’t mean he wouldn’t make a good president. But I have to wonder about a man’s whose brain has not moved into the 21st century. My 84 year-old father emails me. My 80 year-old mother types up meeting minuets in Word and she has only one good eye. Sheesh.
To me - It’s the judges stupid. I believe runaway judges are as important in the long term as the battle against Islamofascists. When judges start making the law, it is a threat to the democratic process. I am disappointed in the President’s record of not finding a way to do an end around this Clintonesque blocking of voting on judges. (Vote Thune)
I also feel that the prescription drug program is a disaster that will haunt us forever. Why didn’t he negotiate with the pharmaceutical companies for senior discounts in conjunction with the plan. At the very least it should have been for the lowest income seniors. Why pay for something that is already being paid for by more well off individuals through their health care plans.
I can understand why this stuff will drive you crazy enough to do irrational things like throw your vote away.
Good link
Interesting take on the prescription drug plan
I second your thoughts on the prescription drug program. People are always trying to avoid the laws of economics. It cannot be done. If you want the life-saving high-tech drugs, it's going to cost money, a lot of money.
Anyhow, "Is Kerry really likely to... waste more tax dollars?"
Hasn't Kerry pledged to do exactly that, if not quite in those words?
I think Kerry is in such a world of his own that he does not believe they want to kill HIM. Terrifying.
Is Kerry really likely to initiate more unnecessary wars, threaten more civil liberties and waste more tax dollars?
As a recovering looneytarian, I know their language well. In plainspeak: screw the war on terror. Favorable references to an unrepetant tax evader like Micheal Baradnik do not help Bandow's credibility much, either.
Any conservatives who really think we'd be better off with Kerry should be aware that the CPUSA agrees.
I agree with Doug Bandow's analysis. President Bush is not a conservative or Republican in the historic sense as Goldwater and Reagan were. He is, like so many today, an LBJ-style fiscal-liberal Democrat in Republican's clothing. He is a "compassionate conservative", which means he is for Mom, the Flag, the Bible, and apple pie ? subsidized and controlled by the executive branch of the federal government.
Even President Clinton was actually more fiscally conservative than is Bush, reforming welfare and balancing the budget ? under pressure from Republicans like Newt Gingrich. If we were living in normal times, I would think that a pretty good combination, a Democratic President gridlocked by a Republican Congress. So, Kerry might be more or less tolerable in that case.
But thee are not normal times. We are at War. Excactly 3 years ago on this day, September 11, 2001, a group of Muslims were allowed by Political Correctness to board airplanes and to take them over. They deliberately crashed two of those planes into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, destroying those splendid skyscrapers and murdering 3,000 human beings. They crashed another plane into the Pentagon. They tried to take over another plane and crash it into the Capitol or the White House. But the men and women aboard that plane, Flight 93, were made of flesh, blood, and soul that Muslims will never understand. They would never submit to Islam and they fought and stopped the Muslims. They were heroes.
We must, each and all of us, strive to emulate the heroes of Flight 93. We must stand ready to fight, kill, and die for our freedoms. We must never submit to "the Religion of Peace". We are at War.
We are at War. President Bush, whatever his weaknesses, is at least partly aware of that fact. Kerry is not. Kerry and his followers in the Democratic party would love to forget, and to have you forget, that 9/11 ever happened. They want to focus all our attention instead on their "business as usual": everything reduced to economics, everything subsidized and controlled by the executive branch of the federal government, buying more votes with your money. Money is the root of all evil, except government money, which is the solution to all problems. Socialism at home, appeasement abroad. And continued erosion of the Second Amendment, the First Amendment, and all the rest of the Bill of Rights.
Negotiation, compromise, conciliation, accomodation, appeasement, a soft attitude toward Islam's terrorism. More and ever more Political Correctness. These will destroy us.
We are at War. Bush knows this at least partly, Kerry does not. If the Muslims are allowed to perpetrate another 9/11, Kerry will, in all probability, given everything that I have seen of him so far, do nothing but blame the Republicans and continue to appeae our enemies. Therefore, better four more years of Bush than four years of Kerry. That is my conclusion based on all the evidence I have seen. This War Against Islam's Terror is the issue of this election, on which everything else depends. If we lose this War, we lose everything, above all our freedom. We must fight until we win.
How will we know when we have won? I knew the answer to that question three years ago: when we can rebuild the World Trade Center, higher than ever, and know that no Muslim will ever again dare to try to knock it down.
"Victory, victory at all costs, victory however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival."
-Winston Churchill
1. The paleo-right can never, ever form a majority government, any more than the left can; we are out on the edges of American political discourse.
2. Politics is the art of the possible - we tried the tactic back in 1995 of going straight for abolition of the Department of Education abomination and we got creamed for our efforts - we were "anti-education", a stupid accusation, but it stuck in the public mind. We now understand, as does President Bush, that flank attacks are superior to "over the top". We'll pour conservative wine into the liberal wineskins.
3. We are at war, and Kerry would lose the war - not because he's a bad man, but simply because he's incompentant to run a war.
President Bush is not only the only possible choice for conservatives, he's the correct choice.
Yes this war on terror is very costly in both lives and money but in my opinion no cost is too high. Just remember every single one of those 1000 American dead in Iraq now volunteered to serve. There is no draft so no one can say as some do that Bush killed these American patriots. Every single one of them chose to be a soldier and soldiers get shot at and when they get shot at sometimes they die. That is the cost of freedom. Look how many died during the Revolutionary and American Civil Wars. But I dont hear anyone suggesting the costs of those wars were too high. NO COST IS TOO HIGH FOR FREEDOM BECAUSE FREEDOM IS NOT FREE. It must be bought and payed for from time to time with the blood of heros because unfortunately there are those in the world who dont believe in freedom. These terrorists certainly dont believe in freedom and we can not allow there ideology to win the day. If allowed they will stop at nothing but total world domination. So we must stop at nothing but their total and utter destruction. Dont fool yourself into thinking that this is not their goal with regards to our destruction as well.
I actually agree with Spoons on a lot of his points - but I'm still not inclined to support Kerry for those reasons. Fortunately I'm not a conservative, so saving the Conservative Movement from itself isn't an interest of mine. Wrecking the Leftist movement is, and a Bush victory will go a long ways towards that. ;]
The suggestion that Badnarik, Peroutka or Nader are realistic choices is what ultimately shows this guy to be out to lunch on this one.
However, Maryland will almost certainly be won by Kerry (unless everyone on all sides is massively misjudging the state) So I have something of a luxury, I can make a protest vote. I will probably vote for Badnarik, not because I really like the libertarian party, their platform is the single looniest document I have ever seen, and they are on the wrong side, in the wrong way on every issue in foreign policy. And they are too extreme on domestic issues as well. Not to mention their candidate is insane. However, if enough people vote for them in enough places someone might decide there are votes to pick up in small-government supporters to push a little that way. And of all the outside parties (at least the ones on the Maryland ballot) they are the ones that best represent that.
Of course I'll be kicking myself if I'm wrong and Maryland is close, and it probably won't work anyway (you can't buy votes with small-government, and politicians aren't that smart) but it's worth a shot, especially since Bush's chance of winning the Maryland probably isn't much better than Badnarik's is anyway.
Did ever occur to you that perhaps quite a few folks agree with you in Maryland? And that if they all thought the same way, then they would all not vote for Bush, thereby creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Goddamit, man, vote for Bush, and make the race that much closer!
I console myself with the knowledge that many domestic policies with which I disagree will probably happen anyway, regardless of who's President. The public demand for this kind of spending may be misguided but right now it's too loud to ignore. If we're going to do it we should try and do it well. And frankly, I prefer Bush's past record and current proposals to Kerry's vague, contradictory, bureaucratic, and even more expensive alternatives.
While George W. Bush might be fumbling his way through our first war of this kind against this, John Kerry can't even begin to get that big head of his around this...
The idea is almost laughable, yes we have a republican Governor, but he was elected for purely local reasons, and doesn't consider the state competative enough to warrant Bush coming here. The largest voting block in the state is (heavily democratic) Baltimore City, the second largerst is washington beauracrats and other federal employees. Neither party is spending any money advertising here. (The republican senate candidate is running a low budget campaign, at least from what little I've seen of it.)
There are republicans here, but not enough to influence the election without a sizable defection of democrats. It is of course possible that George Bush could win the state, but if there is a shift to that extent it will probably be part of a major nationwide trend, as it would require at least a 7 point swing here (by the last poll I have), which would put more than enough electoral votes in Bush's hands nation wide.
Further I'm not a republican; I won't vote for Kerry because the man has the spine of a squid, and if I thought my vote would materially help to defeat Kerry, I'd probably vote for Bush. However, I'm not going to vote for Bush just to throw the man a bone, or out of some sense of political loyalty. If he is willing to work for my vote it would not be hard for him to earn, but I've seen no sign that Bush or the Republicans think my vote is valuable to them. So I want to make it as clear as possible that it is available in the hope that someone from some faction of some reasonable political party may go after my vote in the 2008 elections. And if the people who feel like me, all do as I do, there is a chance that someone might. If we stay home, or vote for Bush hoping to give him a mandate beyond 270 electoral votes then the Republicans can continue to ignore the vote.
It bothers to me no end to hear people playing politics with their vote. There is way too much at stake this time around to be thinking about 2008. In my mind, the only honorable thing to do is to vote your conscience and cast your vote for who you think would best keep us safe going forward in the war on terror. And that would be George W Bush. Nothing else is more important than this and playing politics with your vote would be a travesty. You dont have to agree with everything Bush stands for and shouldnt try to put labels on him, yourself or anyone else. Everyone is an individual with their own ideas and you cant please everyone. There is no way on this earth that there will ever be a candidate who pleases everyone and agrees with everyone on everything. That is impossible. If there was a candidate such as this I would recommend running as fast as you can in the opposite direction. It is the kerry's of the world who try to please everyone and end up sounding like a total ass. Vote for someone with a backbone and stop worrying about all this other silly stuff or how this vote might effect 2008. Voting for who you want to be president is voicing your opinion not throwing your vote away.
the big picture. Stop being selfish and realize there are more important issues facing the nation and the world today than any minor issue.
Fist we must focus on the survival of the republic and then we can worry about the details.
If Bush or Kerry are closer to your views, vote for them. To paraphrase Badnarik, the only wasted vote is the one for a candidate that doesn't represent you. I don't like the status quo, so I won't vote for it. I know my candidate won't win, but I can go to bed knowing I did what I thought was right. I hope everyone else here does the same, regardless of what candidate you like.
"Live by your principles, and you will die without regret" - me
1: Has Bush "initiated any unnecessary wars"?
No.
Is Kerry likely to?
No.
Has Bush iniated two necessary attacks upon our enemies in teh global war on terror?
Yes.
Would Kerry have done so?
Who can possibly know?
Is a President Kerry likely to initiate necessary attacks in the future?
No.
Do I have any respect for the foreign policy pronouncements of someone who doesn't believe we're at war now with all state sponsors of terror? And who claims that invading Iraq was a bad idea?
No.
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.